


wide-eyed and stupid

by la_victorienne



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-04
Updated: 2009-01-04
Packaged: 2018-10-16 00:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10560656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_victorienne/pseuds/la_victorienne
Summary: high, high above the sky, ianto dangles his feet from a ferris wheel and considers.





	

Ianto sits quietly in the slowly rising Ferris wheel, his carefully-polished wingtips dangling like a child’s trainers in the air, heels hanging off of the ledge intended for them, just for the feeling of freedom and endlessness. Alone but not lonely, he looks out over the spinning, twirling lights without seeing them, thinking mildly that tonight’s sunset is pretty, and he should have bought a camera already – though with his job, one could hardly use it once without it being crushed to pieces or slimed with unidentifiable alien goo – if only to document the moments of sheer normalcy in the utterly abnormal life he leads.

Although, now that he thinks of it, it’s more likely that Jack would place a moratorium on banal, outdoor photographs and only permit him to take obscene photos in the bedroom, and therefore it’s much better that he doesn’t have a camera and does have an observant mind, to document moments such as this when he chooses without fear of the camera not only being ruined by yet another Rift-triggered invasion, but the loss of a memory card allowing a perfect stranger access to the more _avant garde_ of Jack’s multitudinous ingenuities. But that thought is neither here nor there, and he did, after all, step into the wheel's seat with the intention of quite deliberately _not_ thinking about work, Jack, or anything involved therein – a resolution, he realizes, by its very definition designed and doomed to fail.

Because this is all Ianto is, when he takes the time to consider it: work, and Jack, and coffee, all intermingled into one terrible, frightening, inexplicably beautiful ball. Fascinating, dangerous, incredible – how did such a _normal_ tailor’s son become the paramour of a great hero, the lover and employee of something that defies space and time with his very existence, and yet simultaneously takes such great pains to protect both? Such thoughts are second nature to him now, the product of what seems like eons but what has been, in truth, only a few years in the service of Torchwood, in the service of Jack; without the periodic perusal of his unconventional situation Ianto would surely go mad, and then where would Jack, work, and the coffee be?

He ignores the nagging voice inside his head that says _they’d be just fine_ , because it suits Ianto to believe that for some unimaginable reason Jack might need him, just him, even if it is to make the coffee and look nice and have surprising sex against filing cabinets and things. Ianto has ever been, above all things, a man who likes to be needed, and even if it is just casual sex against filing cabinets and antique desks, at least it is physical contact, the brush of skin to skin.

Although, he reckons, the sex hasn’t been really that casual for a good while, now, and it is that which finally quashes the insistent voice, the one that sounds oddly and painfully like Lisa. Jack sleeps in his bed almost three nights a week, and always on weekends, and he’s become even more of a homebody since he was brought up from the ground, since they lost Tosh and Owen, since the team became a trio – leaving Ianto to wonder why it is, really, that he’s alone on such a lovely night, riding the Ferris wheel in a twirling, colorful, temporary carnival, when he could be at home with Jack, drinking a glass of wine and listening to old records.

But, of course, he’s not alone, and as he steps off of the Ferris wheel he brushes shoulders with the Captain where he stands, feet resolutely on the ground - odd, for he does so love the sky - and then Jack turns, and smiles, and Ianto knows he wouldn’t use the imaginary camera for anything but this, in any case. They walk home in the cold, bound for that glass of wine and old record, and Ianto looks back once at the wheel as he puts his restless thoughts at ease. 


End file.
